Greenhushing: Why Companies Go Quiet on Climate Targets

Greenwashing is companies overclaiming their climate commitments. Greenhushing is companies with validated climate commitments deliberately not communicating them. South Pole's 2022 survey found 23% of companies with externally validated science-based targets were practicing the latter.

The irony is sharp: regulatory and activist scrutiny of climate marketing overstatements created an incentive for companies that had gone through the effort of getting rigorous third-party validation to go quiet about the validated commitment.

Key findings

South Pole's 2022 survey of approximately 1,200 companies found that 23% of those with validated science-based targets (SBTi) were not communicating those targets publicly.
The primary reason cited: fear of greenwashing accusations.
Consumer-facing industries (food and beverage, retail, consumer goods) showed the highest rates of greenhushing.
The 2023 South Pole follow-up found the trend continuing, with some sectors showing increasing reticence about climate communication.
Companies that validated their targets through the SBTi process had their emissions pathways independently verified as Paris-aligned -- making greenwashing claims about the targets themselves difficult to sustain.
The SBTi had more than 7,000 companies with targets or commitments as of 2023, with validated targets growing annually.

What science-based targets actually mean

SBTi validation is a specific, rigorous process. A company that has a validated science-based target has:

Submitted an emissions reduction pathway to SBTi for review.
Had that pathway assessed against climate models for consistency with 1.5-2 degree Celsius warming limits.
Received validation that the pathway is scientifically credible.
Committed to annual reporting against the target.

This is not marketing language. It is third-party verification. A company with a validated SBTi target has made a commitment with more external rigor than almost any other corporate climate commitment form. "Net zero by 2050" corporate pledges -- which have no required verification -- are a different and weaker category.

When 23% of companies with this stronger commitment form go quiet about it, something about the communication environment is creating the wrong incentives.

Scientists reviewing environmental certification documentation in a laboratory — The Science Based Targets initiative validates corporate emissions reduction pathways against climate science. Companies that have gone through SBTi validation have made commitments with more independent rigor than most other corporate climate pledge forms. *Photo via Pexels. Pexels License.*

Why are companies with climate targets choosing not to publicize them?

South Pole's survey asked companies their reasons for not communicating validated commitments. The answers:

Fear of greenwashing accusations (primary reason)
Concern about regulatory scrutiny of marketing claims
Concern about attention to the gap between current emissions trajectory and the committed pathway
Uncertainty about how to communicate climate targets without triggering activism

The third reason is worth examining closely. A validated science-based target commits a company to a specific emissions reduction trajectory. If the current year's emissions performance is below that trajectory -- the company is on track -- communication is relatively safe. If emissions are above the trajectory -- the company is behind -- communication risks drawing attention to underperformance.

For companies with validated targets but current underperformance against those targets, greenhushing is a rational short-term response. It delays the accountability moment.

Corporate communications team reviewing messaging strategy documents — South Pole found that consumer-facing companies were most likely to practice greenhushing. The sectors where greenwashing accusations have been most prominent -- food, retail, consumer goods -- are the same sectors where validated commitments are least likely to be communicated. *Photo via Pexels. Pexels License.*

The signal problem

From a policy standpoint, greenhushing creates a false public signal. If companies with genuine, validated climate commitments go quiet, the public record of corporate climate action is left to: (a) companies making unvalidated net-zero pledges, which are mostly marketing language; and (b) companies that have nothing to say because they have no meaningful climate commitment.

The resulting picture understates actual corporate climate progress. Investors, consumers, and policymakers who rely on public corporate climate communication are seeing a systematically biased sample: the most rigorous commitments are underrepresented because those companies are most afraid of being scrutinized.

The SEC's climate disclosure rule (proposed 2022, adopted March 2024, subsequently withdrawn from defense in 2025 -- see SEC Climate Disclosure Rule Abandoned) was partly a response to this problem: mandatory standardized disclosure would have reduced the incentive for greenhushing by creating a level information playing field. Its abandonment leaves the voluntary disclosure environment that produces the greenhushing dynamic.

Stack of eco-friendly branded packaging boxes with sustainability marketing claims — Corporate sustainability marketing, greenhushing inverts greenwashing by concealing environmental efforts to avoid scrutiny of unmet targets.

What created the greenwashing fear

Companies aren't afraid of greenwashing accusations in the abstract. They're afraid of specific consequences that have happened to specific companies.

H&M, one of the largest fast fashion retailers, faced significant consumer and regulatory scrutiny in 2022 and 2023 over its "Conscious" sustainability line and scorecards, which regulators in the Netherlands and Norway found contained misleading claims. Norway's Consumer Authority found H&M's sustainability scoring system lacked sufficient evidence. The UK's Competition and Markets Authority investigated H&M's environmental claims. H&M was not fined criminally in most of these cases, but the reputational and regulatory cost of defending the claims was real and public.

Volkswagen's Dieselgate scandal, though a different kind of environmental fraud, left an operational mark on how companies think about environmental claims. When a company's verified compliance infrastructure turned out to be designed to deceive regulators, the lesson absorbed by other companies' legal and compliance teams was: the gap between what you claim and what you can defend is liability.

Oatly, the oat-milk brand, faced a campaign by investors and consumer groups questioning whether its climate marketing was accurate after a 2020 short report by Spruce Point Capital alleged that Oatly's carbon footprint claims were overstated. Oatly settled some claims related to its "wow no cow" advertising by modifying its copy. Again, no criminal conviction, but the cost of the campaign itself was a deterrent signal.

The common pattern across these cases: the greenwashing accusation doesn't require fraud. It requires a gap between what you say and what you can fully document. Companies with validated science-based targets have submitted those targets to SBTi scrutiny and have documentation. But they also have a year-by-year emissions performance record that may or may not be on track with the trajectory. A company on track communicates the validated target easily. A company behind its own trajectory communicates it into a story about underperformance.

That's the specific mechanism South Pole identified: the fear isn't primarily about false claims. It's about true claims that invite comparison to ongoing performance.

The WokeCorp assessment

The finding. South Pole's surveys establish a real phenomenon with a specific mechanism: greenwashing scrutiny is creating an incentive to undersell validated commitments. The numbers (23% of companies with SBTi targets not communicating them publicly) are from surveys, not from audits of all companies, so the true rate is uncertain -- but the directional finding is credible and has been replicated in the 2023 follow-up.

The implication. The regulatory and activist framework that targets greenwashing has created a secondary problem: companies with the strongest actual commitments face the highest communication risk, because they have the most specific targets to be scrutinized against. Weaker commitments are comparatively safer to communicate.

The systemic outcome. The combination of greenwashing (companies overclaiming) and greenhushing (companies with validated claims going quiet) produces a corporate climate communication environment where the public signal is unreliable in both directions.

SEC ESG Enforcement: The Greenwashing Fines and the Task Force That Vanished -- the enforcement environment that created the greenwashing fear
SEC Climate Disclosure Rule Abandoned -- the disclosure rule that would have changed the communication incentives
InfluenceMap Climate Lobbying Gap -- the lobbying activity that runs opposite to corporate climate pledges

Sources

South Pole, "Net Zero and Beyond: A Deep examine Climate Targets and Action," 2022. Verified June 2026.
South Pole, "Net Zero Survey Insights," 2023. Verified June 2026.
Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi), Corporate Progress Report, 2023. Verified June 2026.